Carlos Miller is founder and publisher of Photography is Not a Crime, which began as a one-man blog in 2007 to document his trial after he was arrested for photographing police during a journalistic assignment.
He is also the author of The Citizen Journalist's Photography Handbook, which can be purchased through Amazon.

NFL Players Using Smartphone Cameras to Record Police who Pull Them Over

November 29, 2013

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NFL players have began using their smartphones to record police after getting pulled over in what they believe may be cases of racial profiling.

Whether that’s true or not, the players report that police begin respecting their rights once they realize they are being recorded.

Obviously, they’ve been lucky so far because we’ve all seen way too many cases where police escalate the Constitutional violations after realizing they are being recorded.

I guess it’s only a matter of time until an NFL player gets arrested for recording police.

Especially considering a spokesman for the police union speculated that these players were recording traffic stops for “hostile purposes.”

Rich Roberts, a spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations, says any recording of a traffic stop doesn’t tell the entire story because it probably doesn’t show how the suspect responded to the officer. Roberts questions if suspects film traffic stops for hostile purposes instead of to prove their innocence.

“Also, there’s a serious question about whether the individual doing the filming is actually interfering with the officer’s duties,” he said.

We’re heard the “interfering” excuse way too many times and seen it be used when citizens are standing more than 30 feet from the cops for us to take that allegation serious.

And we’ve seen way too many Youtube videos of citizens recording their traffic stops to know that the majority of the time, the hostility will come from police.